February 10, 2026
The Empire Club of Canada Presents
Diagnosing and Combatting Health Misinformation: 2026 CMA Health & Media Tracking Survey Launch
Chairman: Saurabh Popat, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Moderator
Vassy Kapelos, Chief Political Correspondent, CTV News
Distinguished Guest Speakers
David Coletto, CEO, Abacus Data
Dr. Tom Frieden, Founder & CEO, Resolve to Save Lives
Panellists
Dr. Jen Gunter, Reproductive Health Advocate
Vass Bednar, Managing Director, The Canadian Shield Institute
David Skok, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, The Logic
Head Table Guests
Dr. Margot Burnell, President, CMA
Welcome Address by Saurabh Popat, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Saurabh Popat, the chair of the board here at the Empire Club of Canada, and your host for today’s event.
To begin, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathering on the Traditional and Treaty Lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation, whose presence on this land dates back thousands of years. I encourage you all to learn more about the Traditional Territory on which you work and live.
A friendly reminder that if you do require French translation, there are headsets in the back to help you with that.
Now, today’s event would not be possible without the generous support of our incredible sponsors. The Empire Club is a non-profit organization, and our sponsors generously support the club, and make these events possible and complimentary for our online viewers to attend. So, please join me in thanking our executive Lead Sponsor of this event today, MD Financial Management, and Scotiabank. Thank you to our VIP Reception Sponsors, the Ontario Hospital Association, Santis, and TELUS Health. Thank you. And a huge thank you to our Event Partner, the Canadian Medical Association. Thank you, CMA. We are also deeply appreciative of the ongoing support of our Lead Season Sponsors, Bruce Power, Hydro One, and National Bank Capital Markets. And our VIP Reception Season Sponsors, Ellis Don, McKinsey & Company, the Ontario Road Builders Association, and Waste Connections of Canada. And finally, thank you to our Media Partner, the Toronto Star, and our AV Partner, Bespoke Audio Visual. Thank you all.
If you have a question for our speakers, please scan the QR code found on your program through the Q&A function, or through the Q&A function, if you’re online. And those of you online, if you require technical assistance, please use the chat feature.
Welcome to the Empire Club of Canada’s first event outside the GTA. That’s right. Throughout our 122-year history, this is the first time we’ve hosted an event outside the GTA, and we’re thrilled to be here in our nation’s capital. And personally, for me, it’s great to be back here, where my healthcare professional journey all started, with training at the Telfer School of Management—and I believe the Telfer School students are here. So, thank you for joining us.
Now, today’s topic could not come at a more opportune or important time. It exists at the intersection of a driving force in our society, technology, and one of the most important parts of our lives, healthcare. And in fact, intersections were a part of some of the first places any of us encountered with AI, because it was first used in our GPS and navigational apps. We put a lot of trust in data algorithms, and AI, in many facets of our lives. And that may pose a low risk for navigating to an event, or making reservations at a restaurant. We don’t need to know who designed the system, or how it prioritizes information. But when healthcare is concerned, those questions matter. And any distortion in the data, whether deliberate or inadvertent, can alter the course of someone’s life forever.
That’s the intersection we’re here to talk about today, how health misinformation shaped by global platforms and political forces beyond our borders is testing the trust in Canada’s healthcare system, and with the healthcare stewards of our system. Canadians increasingly encounter health information through systems we do not control, that we cannot audit, and did not design, and with real consequences for personal decisions, public policy, and trust in our healthcare system. We’re dealing with complex, fast-moving systems shaped by complex algorithms, multiple media sources and platforms, and dynamic geopolitics. Canadians are getting advice, claims, and narratives long before they reach a clinician, a policy maker, or a peer-reviewed journal. And all too often, health information is becoming weaponized—or, as I call it, intentional WMD, weapons of mass disinformation. This is unacceptable, and must be countered with evidence-based and data-driven information. Trust can be forged quickly, but confusion can be propagated even quicker.
Today, in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association, we present “Diagnosing and Combating Health Misinformation, the 2026 CMA Health and Media Tracking Survey Launch.” We will begin with new data from David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data. His team has been tracking rapid shifts in how Canadians assess credibility, authority, and expertise across media environments, and today’s findings offer an early look at where those patterns are heading.
We’ll also hear from Dr. Tom Frieden, who has spent the past year advising governments and global institutions on how public health leadership adapts under sustained political and informational pressure. Our incredible panel brings together the voices actively shaping this conversation in public. Dr. Jen Gunter engages large audiences directly, responding in real time to viral health claims and misinformation. Vas Bednar examines the accountability gap between technology, markets, and regulation with a focus on how AI reshapes public trust. David Skock reports on institutional trust and the evolving role of media, including how journalists navigate credibility in an environment defined by speed and fragmentation. And guiding the discussion is Vassy Kapelos, whose interviews and political coverage continue to shape the national conversation around media, power, and public confidence.
And now, to formally begin, it’s my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, David Coletto. David is one of this country’s most trusted voices on public opinion, politics, and how Canadians are thinking and feeling about the forces shaping our economy, our institutions, and our daily lives. As chair and CEO of Abacus Data, David and his team have built one of Canada’s most respected market research firms. His work begins where data and decision-making meet, helping leaders understand what’s changing beneath the surface, and why it matters. David brings clarity to complexity, a calm voice in noisy moments, and insights that challenge assumptions, while staying grounded in evidence. That is exactly the perspective we want here to begin today’s conversation. Please join me, in welcoming David Coletto.
David Coletto, CEO, Abacus Data
Well, thank you, Saurabh, for that very welcome. And welcome to Ottawa, to the Empire Club, and to all of you for coming out, and taking part in what I think is an incredibly important conversation. As somebody who gets this amazing job to ask thousands of Canadians hundreds of questions every single week, it’s dawned on me very clearly over the last number of years that you could be living in a household with three different people who are all living in entirely different realities, driven in large part by their sources of information, the ecosystem that surrounds them. And I think today, we’re gonna dig deeper into a case study, a very important case study, of the role that all of this false information, misinformation is playing when it comes to the decisions that Canadians are making about their own health. Probably one of the most important things that people feel drives their lives day to day.
This is the third year of this study, and I’m really excited, because as a researcher, data really comes alive when you can start to put a trend line to something. And we now have the ability to do that, and I think that’s really, really important. It’s also one of the only tools like this available. And so, thanks to the Canadian Medical Association, to the physicians who believe this is at the core of what it is they’re doing, we’re able to do this work. And if I might, I just wanna also thank my colleague, Oksana Kishchuk from our Abacus Data team. She’s been such an important part of this research.
So, let’s get into the results. We did a large national survey near the end of last year, interviewed 5,000 Canadian adults. This is a much larger sample size than we’ve done in the past, largely driven by our desire to get into regional, geographic, as well as deeper demographic analysis, which in the full report breaks much of that out. Today, I’m just gonna only be able to share some of the highlights that I hope will inform the conversations to come later today.
Now, when we start with the basic question, you know, how many Canadians feel they’re being exposed, and how often, to false and misleading health information, the sober reality is that close to two-in-three Canadians say they think they are seeing these kinds of content, at least occasionally. It’s up two points from last year, even larger handful from the first time that we asked this. In the first survey we did, we noted that there was quite a large gap between primarily Anglophone Canadians and Francophone Canadians. Francophone Canadians were saying they were exposed to less misleading information. That gap is all but eliminated now, and they are just as likely, those in Francophone Canada, to saying they are exposed to that.
Now, as you would imagine, when we look at the demographic profile, in particular how younger and older Canadians are experiencing this, we’ve noted across the board slight increases or slight decreases among younger generations, who continue to show much higher incidents and reporting of access to false information. But look at the number to the right-hand side of your screen there, of what Baby Boomers are saying, right? We’ve seen a seven percentage point increase in those saying they believe they’re being exposed, at least occasionally, to false information, the largest increase year-over-year of any demographic group that we studied, and a reminder now that those gaps that may have existed across generation and how different generations use technology are closing. And this is becoming a universal issue, not one simply isolated to younger first adopters of technology.
Now, while the experience of health information seems to be static in our tracking, the way Canadians trust health information sources is clearly changing. These numbers show you dramatic declines in the number of Canadians who say they trust, for example, American news organizations, Canadian news organizations, public health organizations, as well as a number of the platforms that we overwhelmingly use, and yet, increasing numbers are questioning the value and the trustworthiness of the content.
What has not changed year-over-year is that most Canadians continue to have high levels of trust in their physician. That has not changed year-over-year. And we are also seeing that as people kind of move away from, or at least are less inclined to trust the external environment, they rely more on their family and friends. And so, we’ve seen an increase by six points year-over-year on those who say they have high trust in that source of information.
Now, obviously, we’ve been living through a interesting, let me just say, year. But the question of where we get our information, and recognizing that as Canadians we rely heavily and still have an immense exposure to news and information, and a lot of false misinformation coming from the United States, signals to us that most Canadians are concerned about an increase in the amount of health information coming from the United States. And a similar proportion say they are concerned about a decrease in the availability of accurate, good quality health information from the US. And the implication of both of those, the cause or the correlation is that if you feel this way, it also has an effect on our trust in our own news media. And so, we see that this concern around access and the quality of information coming out of the United States erodes trust in Canadian news by a substantial portion.
Now, what has not changed year-over-year is that most of us, and probably all of us in this room, rely in some way on online information, as it relates to health information. Whether it’s our personal health, whether it’s about accessing the health system, close to 9 in 10 Canadians say they go online for health information and healthcare information, and information related to their health. And you can see, whether we’re talking about diagnostics or treatment, whether we’re talking about general information about access, whether we’re talking about insurance coverage close to a super majority, or over a majority say they are doing at least some of that some of the time.
Now, one of the things we wanted to better understand in this research was why. What is it about information online that’s driving people there? And so, we looked at a number of factors. And what became very clear, as we would all expect, is that speed is the primary driver for many. Eight in ten say that going online it’s faster than any other way. They believe it’s more convenient. The majority say they have access to more information. But a similar proportion, 57% say they’re going online because they can’t access a health professional. We know that five million Canadians still do not have access to a primary care provider, and the result is, if I can’t get both access at all or even speedy access, I still have a concern, I’m still wanting to know more, and so, they seek other sources of information. Now, what’s also noteworthy is less than half, though, think that information they’re accessing is accurate. And so, while they’re doing more of it and more regularly, they don’t believe that what they’re seeing is the truth, or is a full accuracy of what they should.
Now, one of the things we did new in this year, given that about a year ago we were talking about AI, but what we know from other research is adoption has been pretty quick. And so, we wanted to explore the role that AI and artificial intelligence is playing in people’s healthcare information ecosystem. And what we’ve learned is a few things. One is, a majority or just under a majority are already believing—and this is the key thing—they believe they are using AI. I think far more probably are than even know that they are, or being influenced by artificial intelligence and the information that they’re seeing, whether it be in search results on search platforms, whether it’s access to tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, close to half or more are using these on a regular basis. But the level of trust is much lower. Only one in four Canadians say they trust AI to provide accurate health and healthcare system information. And so, this is an area that we are gonna continue to explore, and the implication and the reason why this is so important stands out in the research.
Among—now what we saw in this research is that the overall number of Canadians who report experiencing adverse reactions from online information has actually come down. There’s some good news there. But when we look at those who say they have used AI, or regularly use AI to access this information, they are five times more likely than those who haven’t to report an adverse effect of that information. And what do those adverse effects look like? Well, when we ask people, have you, as a result of information that you’ve been exposed to, had negative consequences—things like confusion around the best way to proactively take care of your health, mental distress or increased anxiety, even strained relationships with your family or friends. Good news is, across the board, we see double-digit drops.
And when we ask ourselves, well, why might this have happened year-over-year, we can point to, we think, two factors that likely have contributed to. One, the Trump comparison is obvious. I think we’re much more aware of what’s happening out there. We’re more maybe skeptical of it, maybe looking for different sources. But we also know that many of the physicians in this room—Dr. Gunter is an example, who will be on the stage shortly—like organizations like the Canadian Medical Association, with their Healthcare for Real campaign, are fighting back. They’re pushing back on this. And I think we’re starting to see evidence that even though Canadians are exposed to this stuff as much as they were in the past, they’re reporting lower incidences of it doing harm. And that is, that means we can combat this. This can be solved.
Now, when we dig deeper, though, despite that good news, health information appears to continue to breed significant skepticism in the system. Sixty-nine percent of Canadians agree that they are skeptical of any information I see online, even it’s from a source that I trust. We’re putting asterisks on everything. I read this, but is it true? Is it not? A similar proportion say that encountering health information has made them more skeptical of the medical advice that they’re getting from their own healthcare providers. I know from work I’ve done with the Canadian Medical Association, when you talk to physicians, they increasingly are saying, it has become one of the new sources, the deeper sources of friction in my practice, that my patients come to me like they have for a while, but now even more aggressively questioning their own advice.
And so, the question is, what do we do about it? And in the answers to that are overwhelmingly clear, and they remain so. Canadians see that both the platforms themselves, as well as government, overwhelmingly 9 in 10—it’s rare to see Canadians agreeing on much these days, but this is one of them—have a responsibility to prevent this stuff from happening, to prevent health-related misinformation from reaching Canadians on their platforms. And this crosses political, demographic, and regional lines.
Now, some more good news—because I sound like just a bearer of all bad news here today—is the problem of health information has solutions, and I think the public has signaled the path forward. For example, two out of three Canadians say better access to good health info makes them feel more confident, and better able to make decisions as a patient. They’re connecting the two very clearly. And an even larger proportion say they trust Canadian physicians to help them navigate right from wrong. And so, even as we see in other research being done in the United States that trust in American physicians by Americans is dropping, we do not see the equivalent happening here, in part because of, I think, the solidarity, and the work that’s being done to push back on this. So, when people have information, they feel—accurate information, they feel empowered, and then as a result, they become more trusting of the institutions that we see falling short recently.
Now, you can access these two reports by using this QR code to the right, but I should end with this idea. What should we take away from this? Well, the first thing to me is, as someone who gets this unique opportunity to ask Canadians questions around a whole bunch of things, I think this is more than just a health story. It is a deeply compelling case study, and I think Canada’s broader vulnerability to misinformation, because health impacts everyone, and false information is now sweeping into every part of our daily experience. I think you can say for yourselves when you have conversations with families, with friends, with colleagues, with coworkers, that we’re always questioning now what it is we see, and whether we believe it’s real.
And with everything that’s happening in the United States, the reality is this. There is no border for lies. The platforms Canadian rely on to inform themselves are overwhelmingly American, and increasingly shaped by American political forces. So, the real question then becomes, how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect our institutions? How do we protect our systems? And so, in many ways, I think this is the real sovereignty story. As this study lays clearly out, the strength of our news and information ecosystem is directly tied to our health, our wellbeing, and I think, ultimately, the resilience of this country. And so, I am very thankful to the Canadian Medical Association for doing this work, for making it a priority. And we will be back next year with an update, to keep tracking this important and evolving story.
And so, with that, it’s my great pleasure to introduce a friend, Vassy Kapellos. You all know her, or you should. She’s CTV’s chief political correspondent, who will lead the rest of our program. So, thank you, and over to you, Vassy.
Vassy Kapelos, Chief Political Correspondent, CTV News
Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Everybody hear me? Thanks a lot, David. Thanks, everyone, for having me. You may know me, but only half of you trust me, apparently. So I’m cool with that. I’ll work to earn the trust of the rest of you. It’s my pleasure to ask Dr. Frieden to join the conversation. He should be connected to us live right now. We’re gonna speak with him for a few moments, before I bring the panellists up on stage. Hi, Dr. Frieden.
Dr. Tom Frieden, CEO & Founder, Resolve to Save Lives
Hi, thank you for having me there. I’m sorry I can’t be with you either in person or visually, but I’m with you in spirit.
Vassy Kapelos
Well, we’re very glad to have you with us in spirit. Dr. Frieden, of course, is the CEO and founder of the Resolve to Save—pardon me, the…
Dr. Tom Frieden
Resolve to Save Lives. [Indiscernible].
Vassy Kapelos
…Resolve to Save Lives. There you go. But was the director of the CDC for a number of years. And Dr. Frieden, the relationship between Canada and the US during those years was very different than it is right now. To put a finer point on it, in December, our health minister granted an interview to the Canadian press in which she responded to a question about whether or not Canada can still trust the health institutions in the United States by saying no. She does not believe that we can trust them in the same way that we have in the past. Do you think she’s right?
Dr. Tom Frieden
Well, unfortunately, yes, in terms of federal government institutions. There’s still a lot of other health institutions that are very active, whether it’s the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, state health departments. But unfortunately, what we have seen is an ideological takeover of many of the core government public health institutions, and that’s dangerous and unprecedented.
Vassy Kapelos
Do you think it’s permanent?
Dr. Tom Frieden
No. The only thing that’s irreversible is death. And I think what we need to do is build forward to a more resilient future. I think the, to me, the most striking finding despite Canada’s good healthcare system is the difficulty people have accessing it. And so, when we look at the challenges we’re having, a lot of them aren’t going to go away. We are in a different information environment than we will be indefinitely. But we can do a lot by strengthening the primary healthcare system, and also by getting with the program of communicating effectively, rapidly, in real time, in ways that people understand with the right messages, the right messaging. And the fact is that for a long time, we’ve said that epidemics know no borders, because we can have huge challenges from a disease that emerges anywhere in the world. And unfortunately, misinformation also has no borders, as you’re experiencing there.
Vassy Kapelos
So, if you were in our shoes, do I take from what you just said that the sort of two pillars of countering what David just laid out would be kind of what he concluded with, that access needs to be addressed in a more fulsome way. And also, we need to not just like sit back and let misinformation spread.
Dr. Tom Frieden
I think we need to be much better at communicating in modern ways. And that means often by video, that often means with messengers people can understand. And in the longer term, we need to think of misinformation as an epidemic. And we need to address it with improving preparedness, early detection, early response, lesson learning, and resilience. And part of that involves increasing scientific literacy to understand that there’s a big difference between something that we’re virtually certain of, and something that might be true, but we’re still studying. And we need for the public to understand that nuance. In addition, we need to get much better at conveying things effectively and listening to what people are hearing, and revealing the forces that are monetizing misinformation. Because this isn’t just, oh, there’s bad information out there. This is people making money, misleading other people.
Vassy Kapelos
Where in your view does the primary burden of responsibility for doing what you just laid out lie?
Dr. Tom Frieden
You know, I think it’s going to take a lot of us working together. That includes the medical profession, governments, professional societies, individuals, families. This is a very serious health threat. And it’s a very serious health threat because it potentially undermines all of healthcare and all of public health. And we have to get back to a space where we can say you are entitled to your own opinion, but for certain facts that are facts, we’re going to stick to those. Because you know, even if they’re twisted and suppressed and denied, facts are still facts. And that’s one of the things that we have in our favour.
Vassy Kapelos
Do you think the ability still exists to sway a majority of the population that that’s the case?
Dr. Tom Frieden
I do. I think we have to think about the persuadables. There are certain people who are very dug in. We’ve seen this for a long time with the, with vaccine information, where we have had certain people who are just so dug in, it’s part of their identity, they’re not going to change. And at the same time, there are other people who, really the majority are questioning—and that’s not a bad thing—curious, and persuadable. And that’s, I think the group we have to focus on. And that’s the majority of those who have doubts.
Vassy Kapelos
Okay, Dr. Frieden, I will leave it on that note. Appreciate your time very much. Thank you.
Dr. Tom Frieden
Thank you, and all the best.
Vassy Kapelos
I will call the panellists up to the stage, Dr. Jen Gunter, Vas Bednar, and David Scott, please. You’re required to dance to this song, in order to take your seat. Yeah.
David Skok, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, The Logic
That was a optimistic, fun walk-up.
Vassy Kapelos
Yeah, an optimistic talk, as well. I just wanted to mention also, before we get underway with the discussion, that the last few minutes we’ll take audience questions, and you have the ability to submit them electronically, and then I have an iPad up here, so please do so during the conversation. I appreciate all of you making the time for this. I thought before we get into kind of policy prescriptions, the way forward, all that thing, I really—all that stuff—I wanted to get your assessment of sort of where the problem lies right now, and the scope of it. So, Dr. Gunter, you first. Because, like, I feel as though that was a very sophisticated set of answers from Dr. Frieden, but many of us are sitting here going like, what the F is going on in the United States, on a myriad of subjects, but where health is concerned. Like, how bad is this RFK, et cetera, et cetera, stuff?
Dr. Jen Gunter, Reproductive Health Advocate
Yeah, I mean, it’s worse than you think. I think that would be my answer for that. And I would point out that pseudoscience has long been linked with fascism. And when you view it through that lens, you sort of see, you know, pseudoscience, longevity, there’s a long history with eugenics, and so it’s not surprising that we’re seeing Super Bowl ads paid for by the MAHA movement, you know, blaming everything on processed foods, and so I think that we’re really in a very dark time. I mean, I just, the US government just announced they’re gonna study ivermectin for treating cancer. I’m just like, this is so, it’s so catastrophically horrific.
And I would say that, imagine, you know, the most incompetent person you’ve ever worked with. That’s like everybody running everything. And I’m serious, I’m being serious. When you hear the words that come out of Kennedy’s mouth, and, you know, now we have this measles epidemic, which, you know, Canada, I think, lost their measles exemption status first, and I would say that that’s a direct result of misinformation crossing the border in the way that we heard of.
So I think that Canada needs to build robust ecosystems, not just for medical access to high-quality medical information, but also, thinking about you can’t be maybe relying on the FDA to do the work that you think that they’re gonna do. You can’t be relying on the CDC. You need to be looking elsewhere.
Vassy Kapelos
There’s sort of an interesting cross-section in David’s data, David, about sort of, you know, where we go looking for information, the consumption of misinformation, and then how much we trust where we get the information, including, you know, legacy media, all other kind of media. What is your takeaway from that aspect of the data?
David Skok
Well, first of all, let me just say, I couldn’t get up on stage next to Dr. Gunter and not tell my mom, finally, see, the journalism path got me close to the physician world that you wanted me to.
Vass Bednar, Managing Director, The Canadian Shield Institute
What about me?
David Skok
That’s always.
Vassy Kapelos
Yeah. Thanks, David.
David Skok
Thank you. It’s lovely to be on stage with you, Vassy. So, I’m oddly optimistic, based on David’s data. I read the 60, 65% of people who are aware of misinformation. And my first thought was, well, good. Good that they’re learning that they can’t trust this. That’s a sign to me of almost a healing of the system, where people are realizing that, okay, I can’t actually trust everything. That’s a very different place to where we were 5 years ago, or 10 years ago where everything you saw on social media people believe. So, I’m actually quite optimistic, and hearing the doctor as well talk—he made it, he did it as a laugh line, but there’s a lot of truth to what he said about if you’re dead, you’ll know that you didn’t trust it, in effect.
And you know, the job of information, the job of journalism is a timeless job. What we do at The Logic is we do journalism, just like you do. And what people actually need from journalism is they need to know how to protect their family from the predator, or the animal that’s over the hill on the other side, in order to keep their family safe. That’s what we do. We fundamentally tell people, hey, there’s something coming that you need to be aware of, so you can keep your family safe. That job has not changed in millennia. It was the same when we were in caves, and people would draw hieroglyphics about, you know, watch out for this danger. It’s the exact same job today. I think as long as people are aware that they can’t trust how to keep their family safe, there is an optimistic turn here that we will get to, which is, ultimately, if I can’t trust this information to keep my family safe, then I need to figure out places I can go where I can.
Vassy Kapelos
So, the data also showed, Vass, that there’s like a very high level of consensus—I don’t see that consensus in any other poll that you do on politics, David—around like a burden of responsibility lying with the government and tech companies. How’s that going?
Vass Bednar
I mean, it’s not going well. But I think people are less surprised now that when we have unregulated or under-regulated digital markets that the products that we interact with fail, and are of low quality. I mean, one of the words I scribbled down in my notebook before I went down the mental wormhole of misinformation and hieroglyphics—I’m like, wow, I wonder if there is misinformation and hieroglyphics; I’ll have to find out later—is just junk, right? So, because we’ve had this lower threshold in digital markets and app stores are typically the most powerful regulators, right? The most powerful thing standing between us and engaging with these tools, with these platforms, we’ve never held the same quality standard that we do to another kind of, like a physical product coming to the market, right?
So, I can sort of find some optimism to echo David’s. But really, I think we abdicated a lot of our role, in terms of exercising that ability to govern the markets we have, and react to what’s out there. We’re having this conversation in 2026—we could have it in 2016, I wouldn’t have minded. And now the opportunity is, what are the markets we want in Canada? How are we gonna carve them out? And are we ready to truly fight for them instead of continue to shy away from these questions?
Vassy Kapelos
I have a lot of questions about that. But like instinctively, do you feel like we’re too late?
Vass Bednar
Best time to plant a tree was, you know, X amount of time ago. I, it’s never too late to correct a mistake, to quote the Berenstain Bears. And I think this is like a good moment for Canada, in terms of reasserting who we wanna be. And again, I go to the markets we wanna have. What are the information markets we want to have? What is the health we expect? And I think we can use fancy words. Even, I’m quite careful when I even talk about AI. Sometimes they say, you know, computational or a computer system. There’s always a human in the loop somewhere, right? And we have to remember that. But we have taken, we’ve sat on the sidelines. We’ve been nervous about intervening in these markets, because of this elusive promise of productivity growth and wealth, instead of thinking about the guardrails that we need. And now we’re seeing the costs, both health and otherwise, of low quality information products.
Vassy Kapelos
Well, wow. That’s sort of like at the macro level. You do a lot of work kind of fighting this fight on your own. What is that like?
Dr. Jen Gunter
Oh, it’s tough. I would say that I agree that there is hope, because people want information about their health. Everybody here wants information about your health. Some, you hurt your toe, you have a cough, your friend has cancer. You wanna find information about it. And so, when I see all these people going online, like 89% of people with health information online, that tells me people are interested and they’re engaged. And they also really want good information. The problem is, is it’s very difficult if you’re not an expert to know what’s good and what isn’t. And so, how do you know what you’re being presented is valuable, or something you should discard? But I also think it’s really important that we acknowledge you know the elephant in the room, that it’s very difficult for a lot of people to get access to healthcare providers. And that was included in the survey. And if people can’t get access to healthcare providers, then of course they’re going to go online.
And so, we have to look at it, I think we have to look at the problem from top to bottom. But I, you know, every day I get tens, sometimes hundreds of messages of people thanking me for putting that information out there that they want. People want good information. And so, I think that we have to figure out how we can make it, you know, a government mandate to meet people where they are. Why can’t the government be putting out better content for people to have access to? Why can’t this be part of, you know, if we live in a country where we’re supposed to have universal access to healthcare, then our government should also help us have universal access to good healthcare information.
Vassy Kapelos
Do you ever feel, like do you have a sense though of—just to follow up, quickly—do you have a sense of your audience being already on side? Or that you are reaching people who, for example, are skeptical of vaccines, at this point? Like are they searching out the kind of information that you’re putting forward?
Dr. Jen Gunter
So I think, you know, just like there are different, I would say, types of misinformation, in the sense that there are people that are very, very, very down one rabbit hole, for example, with vaccine misinformation, or anti-seed oil, or all that kind of stuff. And reaching those people, I think we need the science of how to reach those people, versus the people who are out there in the general lookers. So, the people who just like, they’re starting their search, or they’re not aligned with a group where it’s part of their identity. Because we do see a lot of identity politics mixed in with misinformation. And so, you know, there’s different strategies. So, we need to—we don’t have enough, for example, evidence-based information to tell us how to reach those people, versus the people that are the general seekers. And if they have access to better information, they’re not gonna end up down that rabbit hole. So, we actually need more research to help us to figure out how to reach those people. Because nobody who’s far down an anti-vaccine rabbit hole is probably ever gonna look at my page, right? They’re gonna swipe past it. So, how do we reach those people? I think we don’t have the science yet.
Vassy Kapelos
David, when we talk about the potential for government involvement in a whole host of this stuff, it has, you know, there’s different ways to look at it. But certainly, for both you and Vass, you know, we, there’s a whole bunch of pieces of legislation, some that have passed, some that are in the works, that involve creating that regulatory space, to some degree, reining in big tech, to some degree. A lot of it has already formally been identified by Jameson Greer, the USTR, as irritants in like a priority for the US at the negotiating table—which, apparently, as of post last night, will resume momentarily, maybe, who knows. You know, what do you know or what are you hearing about the degree to which Canada might be willing to capitulate, like we did on the DST, for example, on things around standing up to big tech?
David Skok
First, I need to give my standard disclaimer. So, I will be speaking about this in my capacity as CEO of The Logic, not as editor-in-chief. In our newsroom, I do not cover these issues, because I’m also the person who is, you know, talking to people about these issues, and trying to get our angle out there. So, just so everybody understands, that’s how journalism works when it’s done right, is you have ethics and values, and you separate the two.
Vass Bednar
But you subscribe, right?
David Skok
Yeah, I got a free subscription somewhere along the way. So, I think there is the today, which is, you know, everybody’s talking about Online News Act and will Meta, won’t they come back? There’s a larger issue at play here. I feel like that’s the last war, and we can talk about that if you want. The future war is licensing, and how the LLMs are working with publishers or not. Particularly, Canadian publishers. So, if you go to any of these chat platforms today—I mean, my favorite little thing is, notice how they spell the word labor, right? O-R, not O-U-R. They are crawling a lot of information that’s coming from outside of Canadian sources. Canadian publishers have done a relatively good job of blocking our content and journalism from appearing on these crawlers, in the hopes that at some point, we will have leverage, in order to have an honest conversation about how do we get effectively compensated for that work? Because these LLMs really, at the end of the day, rely on fact-based information and real-time information, like the work that you do, in order to make their chat platform the most reliable, most effective one. So, at some point, this is gonna be an issue. It is why Meta wants to get back in the game with news. It’s not about the Online News Act, and getting on social media. They can say that as much as they want. But at the end of the day, they have Llama as a chat platform, and Llama needs real-time news and information. That’s why they want us back.
In terms of the Online News Act, I think you’ll see in a world where Meta will come back. Onto that, it was a bit interesting last week to hear a leadership of Meta in Canada talk about how they really wanna be back. They could’ve been back a year ago. They could’ve been back two years ago. They just have to comply with the law, the law of the land in Canada, which is the Online News Act. It’s very easy for them.
Last thing I’ll say about this is, there is this other discourse on this where, oh, if only news were back on Meta or Instagram, Canadians would be more informed. That is complete hogwash. All you need to do is look at the United States, look at the United Kingdom, to see news hasn’t left Meta, and how’s that working out for them? Or go on X. News is on X. Ultimately, these platforms have algorithms. They decide what they want on them. They decide what they don’t. It’s noteworthy that none of them are here today, as always. You know, there are easy choices to be made here, and I think as Canadians, we should be holding them more accountable for that.
Vassy Kapelos
So, the reason why I raise it in the context of CUSMA is because in the aggregate, the previous government—granted, at a very different contextual time—sort of took on the posture, Vass, of standing up to big tech through these various pieces of legislation, or at least wanting to communicate that to Canadians.
Vass Bednar
Yeah.
Vassy Kapelos
David, I think, will disagree with me. My gut feeling is that stuff’s gonna be gone faster than we can blink, in the grand scheme of CUSMA negotiations that are going on. I think it’s something the government is willing to concede for other stuff. What would be the consequence of that, in your view?
Vass Bednar
I think now we’re much more awake to what we signed away with the digital chapter in CUSMA, to sort of understand why has our digital policy strategy generally been this like very Canadian approach, which is we designed something and asked companies, large technology companies, very nicely to comply, right? We enshrined the US’s Section 230. We agreed, we’re like, yeah, let’s leave algorithms as a black box, like we’re not gonna audit those. And it was a bit of a different time, and we were more in kind of a techno-optimist position. I think Canada maybe didn’t fully appreciate, or we didn’t kind of have that public consciousness around it. I think we’re going to see more higher expectations from Canadians, in terms of what we’re defending and kind of standing up for. That’s what makes me hopeful, to the extent that I’m able to be.
Yes, I also hear rumblings where there’s a feeling, if we do anything related to big tech, it’s going to be seen as, you know, we’ll be hit with—and it will be retaliatory. The fusion of large technology companies in the US, with the Trump administration, it’s impossible to separate them. So, some of the time we’re talking about Trump. But really, you know, is what we’re up against those technology firms, and how they’re influencing our lives, and how they can continue to. I’d also like to see other, you know, elements of us stepping up to govern the economy we have, right? And that means progress on privacy, that means caring about how we’re governing data, how we’re sharing it, what we’re doing here to equip and make Canada kind of stronger and better and more effective. So, you’re right, it’s going to be up for grabs. It’s up for grabs because it is an irritant, but I think it should be, and it should stay that way. But there’s more we can do.
David Skok
Yeah, and I don’t want to be naive about it. You know, I just think cultural sovereignty is about more than Heated Rivalry. It’s about….
Vassy Kapelos
But thank you to Heated Rivalry for….
Vass Bednar
We all needed Heated Rivalry. We needed Heated Rivalry.
David Skok
I’m not knocking Heated Rivalry, everybody. Have your time. Enjoy it. But it is about so much more than that. And I would say on CUSMA, look at Spain, which is now looking at bringing in laws for social media, capping it at a certain age. Australia’s done this already. The Nordic countries, whether it’s Denmark or Sweden, are tightening what they’re willing to do with Large Language Models. I think you’re starting to see a little bit more resistance around the world, and that was, you know, what the big revelation was in Carney’s speech in Davos. On CUSMA, is it going to be this? Is it going to be supply management? Is it going to be a bridge? I don’t know, it depends on the day, Vass.
Vassy Kapelos
Depends on the day and the votes. I’m kidding, I’m not a cynic, I promise. Dr. Gunter, I did want to ask you about also sort of, like as we discussed the way forward for Canada, the policies that we might consider here. Based on what you’re experiencing in the United States, what you think a priority or the priorities for us should be, as you watch it unfold there.
Dr. Jen Gunter
Well, I think the, I honestly really believe the biggest priority is making sure that every Canadian has access to seeing, you know, a healthcare professional. Because that is a major driver for going online. And when you can’t get the information, you can’t call up your physician’s office, and get a nurse to call you back, or get an appointment to be seen, you’re going to be going into, you’re going to be heading into the, you know, the misinformation abyss.
But I also feel that we need to have a more robust attention to what we can actually do to offer people alternatives, places to go to. I mean, I’ve never understood why, for example, we don’t have health modules that are available in every language for people to go, and go to the library and see—I mean, they can also be available online. But we can provide information in other ways. And so, I think that we have to start thinking about that.
Vassy Kapelos
What do you think the impediment to that has been so far?
Dr. Jen Gunter
Well, I think like it’s, government’s like, you know, a massive ship, and you can’t move it. And I think that people think that the problem is too big, and so they do nothing, as opposed to saying, well, let’s start going for the low-hanging fruit. I mean, getting enough primary care physicians in Ontario is not going to happen tomorrow, but there are other things we could do. We could actually do some other things that are low-hanging fruit, and maybe start to gain some momentum. And just picking projects. I think people like to know you’re working for them. That’s a big deal. Like, wow, but my government actually did this for me. For example, I hear so many women talking about the free access to birth control, and the free access to menopause hormone therapy in Manitoba and British Columbia. That’s a huge thing, right?
Now, by making that available, that’s also made the government seem like a more reliable source of information to people. I wonder if people in those provinces are now more likely to go to a government site to get information, because my government is caring for me. So, those kinds of projects can have other types of spin-offs. And I know that there’s lots of provinces that have refused to work with the Trudeau government over that, and—but I just think that trying to show that if the government is willing to do something, and it seems pretty small, like just providing contraception, but it actually had a major impact on how people thought about how their government cared about them.
Vassy Kapelos
It sort of reminds me of some more of the data, Vass, that’s in David’s slides there, which includes, sort of, you know, because of that lack of access, a specific turn to AI.
Vass Bednar
M’hm (affirmative).
Vassy Kapelos
What stands out to you about that? What raises red flags for you?
Vass Bednar
What raises a red flag? I mean, I totally understand and appreciate how people want to integrate and use these tools, and maybe compliment while they’re waiting, you know, to see a doctor or access other information. So, I wanna be careful about begrudging people from gravitating towards something that’s also novel, and fundamentally seems like it is able to help them. But again, what stands out to me is quality product, you know? I didn’t mean to mention CUSMA earlier to suggest like, oh, we better keep hanging back, and we can’t really do that much, because there’s also kind of creative policy interventions currently in the US under consumer product liability. You know, class actions, going at Large Language Models, going at social media, being like, you actually do have a duty to provide a quality experience, to provide quality information, or also, you know, false and misleading advertising standards. I do always like to shop the closet we have, legislation-wise, and see like, what are the tools we have, and can they apply?
But that stood out to me. I think probably all of us, at one point or another, has looked up something online. And it did call back to me, there’s older research from, if anyone remembers Seth Steven Davidson’s work, he was an economist that used to work at Google. It’s called Everybody Lies, and it was not a surprise. You know, who we project we are online, you know, maybe on my Facebook account—which I don’t have—I say that I love the Backstreet Boys, but when you look at my Spotify, I’m always listening to NSYNC, which is also false. I’m Team Backstreet.
Vassy Kapelos
Great.
Vass Bednar
Google knows things. The intimacy of the Google search bar, you know, is going to be difficult to disrupt. Google knows things like if I search in a particular order, boob pain and stomachache, that my likelihood for having a particular cancer is quite high. They know that. They don’t do anything that’s useful for me about that information, right? So again, it’s an extractive, a fundamentally kind of extractive experience for people who are volunteering information, and who are trusting the information they receive. And I don’t think we should be tolerating these systems of such low quality overall.
Vassy Kapelos
So, if we’re now just coming together as middle powers, let’s say, David, to decide that kids under 16 should be banned from social media—like, I’ll circle back to a question asked earlier, which is like, it feels like we’re addressing a problem that started 10 years ago, and the problem that Vass describes around AI is already five years ahead of where we should have been addressing it in the first place. Like, are our policies keeping pace? And what’s the consequence, if they’re not?
David Skok
Well, policy, government is always behind. I mean, that’s part of, it’s a reaction, usually, right? It’s really hard to get ahead of things when public opinion, when you wanna pass laws is retroactive, in a way. So, I have a lot of sympathy for lawmakers. I mean, I just, one thing I kind of do feel should be mentioned when we think about young people, it’s we haven’t talked about mental health here today at all, and how much of the misinformation crisis is a mental health crisis, as well, and how we address that, how we deal with that. I’m not, that’s for others to talk about, but I feel that it’s often an other, when in fact it’s kind of primary to the primary care issue, as well.
Are we too late? Look, the good news is, I think the platforms themselves understand—and I can sit here and rage at the platforms, of course—but they understand that ultimately these tools are gonna be parasitic, if they don’t have reliable, good information. And by parasitic, I mean they will not survive themselves if they are inaccurate, because people won’t trust them, and then they’ll go out of business. It’s purely a financial conversation. So, they’re gonna need to keep having reliable information.
There were a bunch of steps that were taken early on that were missteps. Number one, stealing all the training data from all of these different publishers, and that resulted in lawsuits to take that information. Number two was the sandbox of, okay, well, how do we then take that information and learn from it? But the area where there’s the most optimism for me, in terms of legislation or anything else, or just in working with the platforms themselves as publishers or media, is rag. So the real-time taking of that information when somebody sends a query. That’s really where most of the information is needed. When people are asking things, they wanna know the latest updates, and there are ways to measure that.
One of the challenges currently is that Google, you mentioned Google, Google’s the dominant search engine of our time. It’s also leapfrogged all the others, in terms of its AI capabilities in the last few months. And that’s mostly because Google has a monopoly on search, and have been able to use that monopoly on search to then use that for training data. So as publishers, CTV News cannot block Google’s crawlers from taking your journalism, because CTV needs to be on search. And so, one of the very easy things that could be done from the Competition Bureau, for example, that’s happening with the Competition Markets Authority in UK, is force Google to split those up. Make it so that Google can have its monopoly on search, great, or it can have its monopoly on AI, but they can’t force publishers to do them together.
One small little move like that changes the game entirely. Because then Google has to compete on its AI with every other AI company, and therefore, there’s a free market to start to have a conversation around licensing, and making sure there’s reliable information. So, there are things that we can do that are not late. It’s complicated, though, because to your point, there are external factors like CUSMA. But I worry that if we just put up our hands, and shrug, and say, well, CUSMA, we’re kinda not gonna be in a good place in 10 years.
Vassy Kapelos
What is your experience being like in kind of, again, trying to counter a lot of the misinformation through platforms? Like, a lot of the bad info comes from social media, but your presence is also on social media.
Dr. Jen Gunter
Yeah, I mean, I’ve always hoped to provide people a place to go, a place to counter. I mean, I’m very thrilled when people tell me, I always go and see what Gunter said about something before I believe it, and I really hold that very, it’s very dear to me. I’ve also made a very, very public and conscious decision to never take any drug company money, or any money from anything else. And that’s, I think, been also very helpful, because that gives you bias, it absolutely does. We know that if you get a $12 lunch from a drug company, it has an effect. So, you know, I feel that, again, I still feel hopeful, and I feel that people are very grateful when they get good information. And they also get that reflected back from their doctors. I mean, I have patients—well, people, not my patients, people will contact me and say II went to see my doctor about menopause, and I told her I’d read this book, and you know, I saw my doctor cringe. and then I said it was The Menopause Manifesto, and she went, oh great, I’m not gonna have to disappoint you.
And I think that that sort of encapsulates what happens when somebody comes into the office preloaded with good information, versus somebody comes in preloaded with bad information, and those different sort of trajectories. So yeah, that’s why I keep doing it, even though it can be hard, and there’s certainly lots of insults, because there’s lots of people making a lot of money off of misinformation. But I just think the alternative to not do it just doesn’t seem right.
Vassy Kapelos
Well, I did wanna ask you, as well, because I think even policy makers might wonder when they’re deciding how to ultimately counter a lot of this, or what policies to put in place. Like, the vitriol you experienced, the backlash, the insults, as you nicely put it. Like, what do you do to withstand that, and why do you feel like it’s still worth it?
Dr. Jen Gunter
Well, like, I don’t really care what, you know, people can, nobody ever attacks my science, I’ll put it that way. No one ever says, Well, you’re wrong, because of this paper or that paper. Which, I’d be horrified if I spread misinformation, even unintentionally. Now people just say like, You’re mean, you’re whatever. I’m like, I’m not in grade 12, I don’t care.
Vass Bednar
You’re allowed to be mean.
Dr. Jen Gunter
I mean, yeah.
Vass Bednar
You can be mean and right.
Dr. Jen Gunter
I mean, exactly. I mean, like, that’s the best insult you have? Like, honestly. So yeah, it doesn’t bother me at all, because no one ever attacks me for the quality of the content that I’m putting out there. So yeah. So, I feel that, you know, I’m sure there’s lots of politicians who are like, I don’t wanna say that, because it’s like—but you’re there to make a difference. You’re not here to say the right thing, to get you elected the next time. If that’s how you’re thinking, you shouldn’t be in politics. You’re here because you were given a mandate by people to make a difference. And I feel like, as a doctor, like, I have a mandate to make a difference.
And so, I think if people are worried about mean words or whatever, you know, that’s what laughing with your partner’s about, or that’s what having a, you know, beer is about afterwards, or just, you know, realizing that at the end of the day, if your mission is correct and if you’re not spreading misinformation, you’re doing right for whoever you’re interacting with, whether it’s one person online, or whether it’s making a decision for the whole country.
Vassy Kapelos
Yay. We’re lucky that you do it. Vass, as far as the platforms themselves, what’s your take on how cognizant they are of the stuff?
Vass Bednar
How cognizant they are?
Vassy Kapelos
How cognizant they are of their ability to be parasitic.
Vass Bednar
Oh, I mean, we know they design themselves to be this way, right? We know that they want to have addictive properties, so that they take, suck our time and attention, right? That’s the most precious kind of thing we can, that we can offer to them. So, we even see, I think with, you know, scams on Meta, right? To the extent that they’re a misinformation scam, or just a general scam, they’re aware of a proxy of, you know, how many millions, if not potential millions they make, but also they keep the money. So, even when they kind of kick people off the platform, to the extent that they do choose selectively to self-regulate in those ways, they still pocket the profit. So, I’m glad we touched on earlier the market for misinformation, and the economic incentives. They’re aware, I’m sure they’d like to tell us, of the many steps that they do take, that they choose to take, that are in their power. But again, economic sovereignty is about governing the markets you have. Can you do that? And I think to make my team laugh, I sort of just made like a little magazine quiz, right? Like, you know, are you doing economic sovereignty? Are you governing the markets that you have? Yes or no? And if it’s a no, why not, right?
So when we have tools, and we have the ability to respond, whether or not there’s a lag, a certain amount of lag, of course, to respond to the economy we’re experiencing and the markets we have, it is incumbent upon us to do that, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if, you know, companies push back, even if Canadian companies push back. And we need to get better at that in Canada. And now, we’ve got to get kind of our butts in gear. And that’s what this moment is all about.
Vassy Kapelos
Do they need new tools to do that? Or do they have one….
Vass Bednar
We got plenty of tools. We are not using them. We have legislative tools, we have laws on the shelf, and we have newer opportunities that we have been hesitant to move forward with.
Vassy Kapelos
If we weren’t using them then though, what are the chances of using them now, when the stakes of using them feel much higher?
Vass Bednar
Stakes feel higher, but I think public expectation is also changing, which is why I pointed to like, we used to be that past CUSMA was much more a period of techno optimism. We see when people have more knowledge, and the ability to select away from poor sources, right? Or AI polluting their feeds, right? People want to go to, say, a video platform that doesn’t have AI. They don’t want to support a movie for the Oscars that used AI for voices. They’re upset even if we’ve used generative material in like a background for something. Those are really important market clues that we didn’t really have before. So, I think that’s a reminder of the power of everyday people, and that we have as consumers. But we need more information in order to be able to switch away, and also support our policy makers in stronger positioning for Canada.
Vassy Kapelos
David, what is your assessment of public expectations around that?
David Skok
I think we have a huge media literacy gap, at the moment. I, you know, as someone who runs a newsroom that takes on challenging subjects, and the thing that always never ceases to stop surprising me is how little the stakeholders understand about what journalism is, and what we do, and how we seek out truth, and how we go about doing that with fact checking, copy editing, layers of, you know, triangulation of truth and sourcing. So, I think we need to do a better job both as a news industry, but as a country and a society, of helping people understand what the role of information or truthful journalism—or whatever you wanna call it—is, because we’ve seeded that ground for a long time, and it’s an ongoing challenge having to educate people as to why we do what we do, in an environment where the platforms make it easy for people to be filtered into their own bubble and feel satiated, because it’s more comfortable. So, there’s lots more work we need to do on that.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Vassy Kapelos
Okay, we have a student question, I believe. A lovely student sitting here, which can be played on the screen. We’ll take a listen in, if we could.
Melisa Eraslan
Hi, my name is Melisa Eraslan, and I’m a medical student at the University of Ottawa. Health is a fundamental right. And in medicine, we learned that it’s our duty to support informed health decisions. Yet many choices are shaped upstream by AI, social influence, and fast-spreading misinformation, while public health bound by ethics and evidence moves slower. If autonomy is being quietly engineered upstream, how should we rethink informed consent and ethical responsibilities? And is it realistic to expect trust-bound institutions to compete in an environment optimized for speed and outrage?
Vassy Kapelos
Who would like to jump in first? Great question.
David Skok
I mean, I’ll probably only understood 10% of that question, so I apologize.
Vassy Kapelos
Me too, yeah.
David Skok
I’m the masochist, here, who decided to start a news organization during this weird and crazy time. As I said off the top, I’m incredibly optimistic, and I see it in our metrics. I should say, every news organization I’ve ever worked for, the stories that generate the most interest, the most engagement, the most subscriptions, the most—whatever revenue stream or metric you wanna account for—the stories that tend to rise to the top are the stories that are the deepest, the richest, the ones that take the most time, and the ones that people really can dive their teeth into. That hasn’t changed. So, I’m actually incredibly optimistic that people will still want that. Is it a smaller amount of people, relative to what else is out there? Yes. We need to do a better job again on media literacy of educating people to take control of their own feeds. It’s not that complicated. People need to first be aware—and it sounds from David’s research that they are becoming more aware—that they need to take back control over their own feeds, and then choose their own sources.
And look, I will say to everybody here, of course my plug is read The Logic. It’s the best news outlet in the world. But pick your sources, pick who you trust and build a feed that makes sense, and I think we need to do a lot of education to push back on this. But what is the old saying? A lie can travel seven times around the world before it can be corrected, I believe. So it is….
Vass Bednar
That feels like misinformation. I’ve never seen it proven. No, I’m just kidding, it’s probably true.
David Skok
Love sitting next to you.
Vassy Kapelos
Dr. Gunter, yeah.
Dr. Jen Gunter
Yeah, I just wanted to add something to that. I mean, because it was a really great question, and brings up this concept of what really is informed consent. And if you think about somebody coming in and they’re saying that they don’t wanna be vaccinated, and that they’ve read all the information, and you try to explain to them that, you know, the correct information, and they decide to not have the vaccine, we would call that informed consent, but it’s not, because they didn’t have, they were preloaded with disinformation. And this becomes a really, you know, difficult thing in the office. People come in, they want a surgical procedure, or they want to take a medication they’ve heard about online. They wanna take ivermectin for cancer. They wanna take rapamycin, because they heard a longevity expert talk about it. And they’re so sure that they’re correct, then is the discussion you’re really having informed consent? And my answer would be it’s probably not. Because they haven’t actually had access to all the information. And I think this is something we actually have to figure out how we’re gonna teach in medical schools, and how do we know when the metric of informed consent has been met? And I don’t think I have the answer to it. I mean, we can document all we want, patient says they understood. But it opens up, how do you really know if somebody’s truly informed, based on what they came in preloaded with?
Vass Bednar
Yeah, and you’re making me think of upstream privacy laws too, right? And expectations, and sharing data, and information, and also what people are getting themselves into. I don’t think anyone wants to like, casually chat, again, with a computer system about their mental health, and then get an ad for something, right? We don’t—we’re like, still reconciling with this. But then there’s this other element where people seem to understand that the advertising economy is so synonymous with our online and kind of e-commerce experiences. So, zooming out, I think, again, information ecosystems, epistemic sovereignty, freedom of thought, right? Freedom to get great information, and not kind of have the information ecosystem contorted and manipulated is the fight for us now in Canada.
Dr. Jen Gunter
And we haven’t even talked about health apps…
Vass Bednar
And we haven’t.
Dr. Jen Gunter
…you know, and all the detailed information people are putting out there, and how is that information being bought and sold and transmitted.
Vass Bednar
Yeah.
Vassy Kapelos
We’ll save that for our next discussion, because I have to conclude it there. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate you very much listening. Appreciate your participation. I’ll call Dr. Burnell up, please.
Note of Appreciation by Dr. Margot Burnell, President, CMA
So, what an amazing panel. Give them a round of applause. So, I just want to thank our speakers and presenters, just an extraordinary group of health policy and media experts, for leading us through this important discussion. And your insight shed light on the real harm caused by false health information, and remind us why this work must remain a priority. Solutions were brought forward at the micro and macro level, so truly important, we need to find those solutions and work towards them.
In my own practice as a medical oncologist, I’ve seen how false information is directly affecting people. And I’ve spoken to cancer patients misled by claims of miracle cures. I wish I could cure everyone. And immunocompromised patients afraid of vaccines because of what they’ve read online. Unfortunately, it’s easy to see how this happens. When people can’t access timely care, they’re often forced to look elsewhere for quick answers. And the spread of false health information doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It thrives in spaces where people feel uncertain, underserved, or overwhelmed. The rapid growth of AI has only added to the challenge. And as we heard today in our survey results, people who followed health advice from AI were five times more likely to experience harms than those who did not. While only a quarter of responders trust AI to provide accurate health information, about half are using AI tools to diagnose or treat their health issues. And that was the most stunning number to me in this report. The bottom line is that AI is already reshaping healthcare, and it’s here to stay. That’s why government, health providers, and patients must work together to ensure AI is a tool for reliable health information. Every one of us in this room has a role to play within our social networks, with our work, with our colleagues, and in our institutions.
There was encouraging news from the survey—I’m the eternal optimist, so that’s good—85% of respondents trust physicians to help them navigate health information. And this truly underscores the important role doctors can play in countering false health information. When someone has a trusted care provider, they have somewhere to go for accurate, helpful information, and can more easily filter out the noise. But that takes time and effort to build that trusting relationship. In many ways, improving access to care across Canada is one of the most effective ways to curb the spread of false health information. It’s also powerful to see health experts expanding their presence online. And I want to thank members of the CMA Media Network for their leadership in this space. It truly is making a difference.
CMA stands ready to collaborate with government and other partners to ensure everyone has access to the healthcare they deserve. Before I wrap up, I want to thank the Empire Club of Canada for hosting this event, their first ever in Ottawa, and to Abacus Data for their tireless work on our third health and media tracking survey and analysis. I look forward to the next one. Thank you to our executive Lead Sponsors of the event, MD Financial Management and Scotiabank.
This information is helping us understand how to build a safer, more reliable information ecosystem, one that ultimately strengthens our entire healthcare system. I want to, again, thank all of our presenters today for their insights and everyone who showed up today. The fact that hundreds of you participated in person or online is a testament to the importance of this issue. Thank you. Merci. Miigwech.
Concluding Remarks by Saurabh Popat
Thank you, Dr. Burnell, Canadian Medical Association, that incredible power panel. Fantastic, fantastic insights. And thank you, again, for making this inaugural Ottawa event a success. I’d also like to take a moment to recognize the students and young leaders joining us here today. Their presence is made possible through the charitable arm, the Empire Club Foundation, and the generosity of our donors. This support enables us to invite future leaders to take part in today’s dialogue and to empower them to turn knowledge into leadership that shines in communities, boardrooms, and national conversations shaping Canada’s future.
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I also hope that you’ll join us for two exciting upcoming events. I hope you’ll join us for a great conversation about the hidden cost of care, and carrying it all at home, at work, and in our communities. On April 17th, the Empire Club will be hosting “Caring More, Losing Ground, or Caring Up, Caring Down, and Burning Out,” a hybrid panel moderated by journalist and TV host Teri Hart, bringing together Lisa Vitoyuk, the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Amy Kupal, and Ann Hui. The speakers will explore what it means to juggle caring for kids, aging parents, teams, and communities while trying to build a sustainable career, and what leaders can do better to support the caregivers in their lives and organizations.
And then on April 24th, we’re very excited to be hosting Minister Tim Hodgson, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, “One Year of Nation Building, Looking Back and Moving Forward.” This event will examine a pivotal year for Canada’s economic and strategic direction, and what comes next as our country gets building again. Tickets for both events are now on sale.
And as always, as a club of record, the Empire Club events are available to watch and listen to on our website, and the recording of today’s event will be available shortly. Thank you all again for being a part of this important conversation. This meeting is now adjourned.
